PhoebeE's blog

“Why don’t you actually do something rather than just praying about it?”  

You could be forgiven for thinking the only place the Bible and theatre cross are at children’s nativity plays and the odd Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. However, these are words we perhaps don’t hear together as much as we should. The basis of modern theatre and much of what we see on stage today, has come from a combination of these two things.  

Protest poetry is exactly what it sounds like – a poem or poems where the main theme is uncovering and shining light on issues of social justice or capturing an emotional response to injustices. The natural flow of poetry makes the creative expression of emotion easy to follow, channelling the emotions of the poet to elicit new ones from the reader. 

Today I ended a nine year relationship. It was one I entered into because it was convenient. I didn’t know any better, and then after a while it was comfortable and harder to get out of. This was my relationship with my bank; Barclays. However, today I switched. To an ethical, greener bank with the help of the JustMoney Movement.  

By Rosie Venner, JustMoney Movement Programme Manager

Ethical banking wasn’t on my radar when I started university back in the early 2000s. I’m slightly ashamed to say that when I needed to open a current account, I simply opted for the bank that gave me a free overdraft and a railcard.  

It’s January! Do you know what that means? It's time to do something with all those old gift tags, scraps of wrapping paper, cardboard boxes and other festive debris that is lying around. And there is no better use for it than for social justice! This month’s creative protest blog focuses on ‘Craftivism’. 

In this month’s Creative Protest blog we will be exploring theatre as a form of protest. For years theatre has been a medium by which actors and audiences can explore political messages. Even if we go as far back as Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ in 1605, the use of fictional characters allowed the playwright to explore and criticise the ruling of King James I. Then, if we go even further back to the Ancient Greeks, theatre was embedded within their democratic process.